New Housing and the London Plan

LSE London’s response to the Fixing our broken housing market consultation 2 May 2017 Members of the LSE London research group, together with academic and research colleagues from elsewhere, met on 26th April to discuss our response to the consultation around the Housing White Paper. Those endorsing this response are listed at the end of the document. Here we present an overview, plus responses to some specific questions. Overview Our overall response… Read More

On 19 April 2017, Kath Scanlon presented at the Redesigning Social Housing against Poverty in Europe (RESHAPE) annual conference in Bozen-Bolzano (Italy). Her presentation, Social housing in England after the GFC: affordable vs ‘affordable’ (download PPT here), covered themes such as England’s ‘housing crisis’, changing nature of social landlords, and marginalisation of social housing and growth of ‘affordable’ – but not social — products. Abstract: England’s increasing housing affordability problem, widely described… Read More

Christine Whitehead was one of the experts that provided advice and guidance on the report, ‘Strength in Numbers: Funding and Building More Affordable Housing in London‘, by Silviya Barrett and Tom Dilke. The report examines what the authors perceive to be two of the main barriers preventing local authorities from building, namely: the cost of land and the availability of funding. The report brings to light the benefits of cross-borough collaboration on… Read More

LSE London’s 2017 Lent term seminar series begins on the 16th of January. Speakers from within and beyond LSE will focus on London’s current economic and political environment London, covering relevant issues such as London’s planning strategy, Brexit, gender, urban space, and right to the everyday life, West London corridor, suburban gentrification, TFL crossrail, and the Outer London Commission. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is… Read More

On Thursday, 1 December 2016, LSE London launched the final report and recommendations on how to accelerate the supply of new housing in London. This was a culmination of discussions with specialists from central government, the GLA, and London boroughs together with a small number of other key actors from industry and academia. This event followed up on our interim report we published in June 2016, taking full account of changing political… Read More

The Social Mobility Commission published their annual report on the problem of social mobility in Britain. This year they placed strong emphasis on new evidence that suggests that for young people obstacles for social mobility are getting worse not better. The evidence they provide highlights four key areas that negatively affect the poor, low-and middle-income families and communities in England: a discriminatory education system, a two-tier labour market, an imbalanced economy, and… Read More

The Mayor of London commissioned LSE London research on housing density. This research data is meant to aid in the development of policies and preparation of the London Plan. Links to all of the reports can be found here. LSE London’s Christine Whitehead, Alan Mace, and Ian Gordon wrote two out of the the five reports. The first report titled, ‘Defining, measuring and implementing density standards in London’ (London Plan Density Research… Read More

Prof Christine Whitehead gave one of the keynote speeches at The American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA) 2016 annual international conference held in Alicante, Spain. Christine’s presentation, titled ‘Is Social and Affordable Housing in Jeopardy?’ dealt with the questions of why social and affordable housing matter, the different definitions and practices across Europe over time, and a historical overview of financing models in Europe and in the UK. She also… Read More

Prof Christine Whitehead spoke at The Residential Funding Conference on Tuesday, 5 July 2016. She provided an economic overview of the political and economic climate after the Referendum. Currently, she says, there is no real or clear-cut assessment that can be made in such a sensitive atmosphere. The story that will dominate for the next few months, perhaps years, she argues, are about expectations and risks–neither of which are handled well by the… Read More

On 23 June 2016, we hosted the final conference of our HEIF 5 project on accelerating housing production in London. Over the last 18 months LSE London has been discussing how to accelerate the supply of new housing in London with experts from government, industry and academia. We are now finalising our findings and recommendations about how the Mayor’s housing goals might most effectively be supported, both immediately and over the longer term…. Read More